“Now here comes the important part, so listen to me carefully. Bern Stapleton is a veteran of two previous trips. Dave Graves has made one. Sam, my second in command, has made five and I’ve made seven. The rest of you are newbies, and I’ll tell you what I tell all newbies: This is your final chance to turn around. If you have even the slightest doubt about your ability to pull your weight from ingress to final egress, you must say so now.”
Nobody speaks up.
Kathy nods. “Outstanding. Let’s get this show on the road.”
One by one they cross the access arm and are helped into the spacecraft by a quartet of white-suited (and disinfected) service personnel. Lundgren, Drinkwater, and Graves—who’ll be overseeing the flight from a bank of touch screens—go first.
Below them, on the second level, Dr. Dale Glen, physicist Reggie Black, and biologist Bern Stapleton seat themselves in a row.
On the third and widest level, where eventually more paying passengers will sit (or so TetCorp hopes) are Jafari Bankole, the astronomer who’ll have little to do until they’re in the MF station, entomologist Adesh Patel, passenger Gareth Winston, and last but not least, the Junior Senator from Maine, Gwendy Peterson.
5
GWENDY SEATS HERSELF BETWEEN Bankole and Patel. Her flight chair looks like a slightly futuristic La-Z-Boy recliner. Above each of them are three blank screens, and for a panicky moment Gwendy can’t remember what they’re there for. She’s supposed to do something to light them up, but what?
She looks to her right in time to see Jafari Bankole plugging a lead into a port in the chest of his suit, and things come into focus. Keep it together, Gwendy.
She plugs in and the screens above her first light up, then boot up. One shows a video feed of the rocket on its launch pad. One shows her vital signs (blood pressure a little high, heart rate normal). The third shows a rolling column of information and numbers as Becky, Eagle Heavy’s computer, runs an ongoing series of self-checks. These mean nothing to Gwendy, but presumably they do to Kathy Lundgren. Also to Sam and Dave Graves, of course, but it’s Kathy—plus Eileen Braddock, the Mission Control Director—who will be watching the read-outs with the greatest attention, because either one of them can scrub the mission if they see something they don’t like. That decision, Gwendy knows, would cost upwards of seventeen million dollars.
Right now all the numbers are green. Above the marching columns is a countdown clock, also in the green.
“Hatch closed,” Becky tells them in her soft, almost human voice. “Conditions remain nominal. T-minus one hour, forty-eight minutes.”
“Downrange check,” Kathy says from two levels above Gwendy.
“Weather downrange …” Becky commences.
“Belay that, Becky.” Kathy can’t turn her head much because of her suit, but she waves an arm. “You give it to me, Gwendy.”
For a terrible moment Gwendy has no idea what to do or how to respond. Her mind is a mighty blank. Then she sees Adesh Patel pointing below her seat and things click into place again. She understands that stress is making her condition worse, and tells herself again that she has to calm down. Must. She’s a lot less terrified about sitting on megatons of highly combustible rocket fuel than she is of the relentless neurological decay going on in the gray sponge between her ears.
She grabs the iPad out of its clips beneath her seat, PETERSON stamped on the cover. She thumbprints it and swipes to the current weather app. The cabin’s superb WiFi overrides the diagnostic screen above her. What takes its place is a weather map similar to one on a TV newscast.
“It’s grand downrange,” she tells Kathy. “High pressure all the way, clear skies, no wind.” And, she knows, it would take hurricane-force winds to knock Eagle Heavy off-course once it was really rolling. Most weather concerns have to do with liftoff and re-entry.
“How about the up-above?” Sam Drinkwater calls back to her. There’s a smile in his voice.
“Thunderstorms seventy miles up, with a slight chance of meteor showers,” Gwendy returns, and everyone laughs. She turns off her tablet, and the diagnostic screen resumes.
Jafari Bankole says, “If you would like the porthole seat, Senator, there is still time for us to switch.”
There are two portholes on the third level—again, with an eye to future tourism. Gareth Winston of course has one of them. Gwendy shakes her head. “As the crew astronomer, I think you should have an observation post. And how many times have I told you to call me Gwendy?”
Bankole smiles. “Many. It just does not come naturally to me.”
“Understood. Appreciated, even. But as long as we’re crammed together in the world’s most expensive sardine can, will you give it your best shot?”
“All right. You are Gwendy, at least until we dock with the Many Flags station.”
They wait. The minutes drain away (the way my mind is draining away, Gwendy can’t help thinking). At T-minus 40, Becky tells them the service structure is retracting on its gigantic rails. At T-minus 35, Becky announces, “Fuel loading has commenced. All systems remain nominal.”
Once upon a time—actually just ten or twelve years ago, but things move fast in the twenty-first century—the fuel was loaded before the human cargo, but SpaceX changed that, and a lot of other things. There are no more flight controls, just the ubiquitous touch screens, and Becky is really running the show (Gwendy just hopes the Beckster isn’t a female version of HAL-9000). Lundgren and Drinkwater are basically just there for what Kathy calls “the dreaded holy-shit moment.” Dave Graves is actually more important; if Becky has a nervous breakdown, he can fix it. Probably. Hopefully.
“Helmets,” Sam Drinkwater says, putting on his. “Let me hear your roger.”
One by one they respond. For a moment Gwendy can’t remember where the catches are, but then it comes to her and she locks down.
“T-minus 27,” Becky informs. “Systems nominal.”
Gwendy glances at Winston, and is meanly pleased to see that some of his rich-guy bonhomie has evaporated. He’s looking out his porthole at blue sky and a corner of the Mission Control building. There’s a red patch on the fleshy cheek Gwendy can see, but otherwise he looks pale. Maybe thinking this wasn’t such a good idea, after all.
As if catching her thought, he turns to her and gives her a thumbs-up. Gwendy returns the gesture.
“Got your special box all secure?” Winston asks.
Gwendy has it beneath one knee, where it won’t fly away unless she does. And she’s secured with a five-point harness, like a jet fighter pilot.
“Good to go.” And then, although she’s no longer sure what it means—if it means anything: “Five-by-five.”
Winston grunts and turns back to the window.
On her left, Adesh has closed his eyes. His lips are moving slightly, almost certainly in prayer. Gwendy would like to do the same, but it’s been a long time since she had any real confidence in God. But there is something. That she’s sure of, because she cannot believe that any power on earth made the strange device currently hidden inside a steel container that can only be opened with a seven-digit code. Why it has ended up in her hands again is a question to which she supposes she knows the answer, or at least part of it. Why she’s saddled with it while suffering the first stages of early-onset Alzheimers is less understandable. It’s also hideously unfair, not to mention absurd, but since when did questions of fairness ever enter into human events? When Job cried out to God, the Almighty’s response was mighty cold: Were you there when I made the world?
Never mind, Gwendy thinks. Third time is the charm, last time pays for all. I’ll do what I have to do, and I’ll hold onto my mind long enough to do it. I promised Farris, and I keep my promises.